Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

Dear Init Freedom Lovers,

Once again the Veteran Unix Admins salute you!

We are happy to announce that the Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate is now available thanks to the support, feedback, and collaboration of the Devuan community. Devuan 2.0 ASCII Stable will be following soon.

The Devuan 2.0 ASCII RC installer now offers a wider variety of Desktop Environmentsincluding XFCE, KDE, MATE, Cinnamon, LXQT (with others available post-install). In addition, there are options for "Console productivity" with hundreds of CLI and TUI utils, as well as a minimal base system ideal for servers.

When installing from ISO, the expert install option offers a choice of SysVinit and OpenRC. Official ready-to-use Devuan 2.0 ASCII RC images are available for dozens of ARM boardsand SOCs, including Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, OrangePi, BananaPi, OLinuXino, Cubieboard, Nokia N900, and several Chromebooks, as well as for Virtualbox/QEMU/Vagrant.

The desktop-live images are recommended for users to explore and easily install Devuan 2.0 ASCII RC and also for the press to review the default Xfce desktop.

The minimal-live image provides a full-featured console-based system with a particular focus on accessibility.

Devuan developers have already started working on the third Devuan release codenamed Beowulf (Planet nr. 38086). Preliminary installer images should be ready for testing soon.

The following will be enough to upgrade if you are already using Devuan ASCII Beta: apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade

## Derivatives

The Devuan project is about providing a reliable universal base for derivatives to build on its foundation. These recent Devuan derivatives deserve special recognition:

Maemo Leste is a new ASCII-based derivative succesfully ported on a number of mobile phones like the Nokia N900, N950, Motorola Droid 4, Allwinner tablets and more. https://maemo-leste.github.io/

DecodeOS is another ASCII-based derivative targeting micro-service usage on anonymous network clusters. It includes original software developed to automatically build p2p networks as Tor hidden service families. https://decodeos.dyne.org/

heads, the libre privacy distro previously based on ASCII, continues its development and has already moved forward to Beowulf as its new base. https://heads.dyne.org

We wish to thank all of you for the incredible support given to this development effort, which continues to make Devuan a useful and reliable base distro as well as a pleasantand cooperative community.

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

Hooray!

I have been Devuanated, and my practice in the art of Devuanism shall continue until my Devuanization is complete. Until then, I will strive to continue in my understanding of Devuanchology, Devuanprocity, and Devuanivity.

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

Good! Are you going to provide a recent version of OpenRC? It could be a great thing if you are the first Debian based distro with full integration of OpenRC, i mean as full replacement of SysVinit and giving the Gentoo scripts (v0.34 Debian Buster package doesn't have it) to get OpenRC working with the graphical system (shutdown,reboot,etc.). Waiting for the stable release of this magnificient distro.

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

13K views in 2 days It shows that even though there are not many replies, many are following the progress.The release will be 'When ready", I assume?I am preparing a new install (CLI-only) and would like to start with ASCII if possible.

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

Just did a bare bones install of this RC ,basic openbox, a workable build environment. Running palemoon,pcmanfm,terminator i was using 284 mb on the amd64 netinstall iso. Basic usage like that is what makes me really enjoy Devuan.

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

I just did a fresh installation from the installer DVD (not the live CD or minimal), using MATE as my DE. The installation itself was very smooth and fast - no problems that I could see.

The installation itself is fine. The only glitch I have encountered in my exhaustive testing (10 minutes of usage ;-) is that in sources.lst, while the deb line for the cdrom is commented out, another has been added, so that the cdrom is asked for during apt operations - might be confusing to people less familiar with how these things work. Also, there is no entry for ascii-updates.

Other than that, Plank has a small glitch in that the tool-tips that fly up when you mouse over an item on the dock are solid black. I wish I could just turn them off altogether.

That's about it for now. I think ASCII is really close to being ready to go...

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

I use ASCII RC on productive systems now. The Cinnamon-OpenRC install is just perfectly stable and flawless.When I use XFCE4 and OpenRC I get a few bumps, but they are easy to overcome.One note: on the XFCE4 desktop the administrative tools cannot be launched using the XFCE4-menu. You have to do a "gksu synaptic" in a terminal - that works well.Even ICA-Client (Citrix Desktop), skype and the latest LibreOffice 6.0.4 work perfectly well.So to say: if it's for me - this version is ready for stable. Congratulations. And a BIG THANK YOU!André

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

One note: on the XFCE4 desktop the administrative tools cannot be launched using the XFCE4-menu. You have to do a "gksu synaptic" in a terminal - that works well.

Ah, another happy Devuan user. Thanks for the report.

Yeah . . . non-functional pkexe from the menu is a known DEBIAN issue that Devuan keeps getting docked for. And the solution is as you described. Now that gksu has been dropped we will have another pkg to maintain . . .

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

I registered explicitly to state how happy I am with Ascii:– naturally it took ages to update, but my system is now much more sprightly in both startup & operation and a number of outstanding irritations have been fixed with the upgrades. Most excellent.

Ascii is one of the distributions within https://auto.mirror.devuan.org, so use that within sources.listThe advice from golinux (the Administrator here) is to use deb.devuan.org as per the advice within https://devuan.org/os/etc/apt/sources.list. There is no need to log into your bank when updating, so I guess that a secure connection via HTTPS is a little over the top.

Use “main contrib non-free” rather than just “main”, else your wifi (etc.) may not work after

PS‘apt-transport-https’ needs to be installed in order to join the rest of the human race within the 21st Century if using HTTPS rather than HTTP, but golinux has stated that HTTPS support will eventually be removed from sources.list. I originally updated using HTTPS, but after changing sources.list to the above & updating again I discovered a missing deb, so NOT using HTTPS is good advice.

GlitchesThere has been enough time to catch only one so far, and it is a universal rather than a Devuan-specific issue:–

Either pin the version from Jessie, or use (eg) ${execi 65000 lsb_release -ds}.

Whilst on the subject, the Conky man page still advises using http:// weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/observations/metar/stations/ (withdrawn 2016-08-03 and gives a 404). http://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov/data/observat … /stations/ is a drop-in replacement, providing the identical METARs.

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

Thank you so much for your work !

The only very very very bad thing is the use of "contrib" and "non-free" with the default install.If we want to fight for freedom, we need to have to fight hard! Let's give up a small part, and they will take it all!

My computer has one network devices which require non-free software (or slow), which I don't use but I can't remove, and also one that work with free software. So here is what is happening for me:Debian: only free software (good) + systemd (bad)Devuan: proprietary software (very very very bad)

My main reason for switching to Devuan is security... I was seriously shocked to see this mistake, I really had idea what Devuan was careful with security!I guess there is so much work that you can't check every detail, so most important:Thank you for the big work, you makes us free again !

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

Essikario wrote:

Thank you so much for your work !

The only very very very bad thing is the use of "contrib" and "non-free" with the default install.If we want to fight for freedom, we need to have to fight hard! Let's give up a small part, and they will take it all!

My computer has one network devices which require non-free software (or slow), which I don't use but I can't remove, and also one that work with free software. So here is what is happening for me:Debian: only free software (good) + systemd (bad)Devuan: proprietary software (very very very bad)

Where is Devuan installing contrib and/or non-free software without your explicit consent? Which install medium have you used? With which options? As we have repeatedly said, Devuan does not install any non-free software at all. It asks if you want to use contrib and/or non-free but this is the same as in Debian. The only non-free software available in the install media is non-free wifi firmware. And you are asked if you want to use it or not. If you discovered an unexpected behaviour in this respect, please file a bug report, providing detailed information about the install image you used, the options you selected at install time, and the specific non-free software you found installed in your Devuan system.

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

KatolaZ wrote:

Essikario wrote:

Thank you so much for your work !

The only very very very bad thing is the use of "contrib" and "non-free" with the default install.If we want to fight for freedom, we need to have to fight hard! Let's give up a small part, and they will take it all!

My computer has one network devices which require non-free software (or slow), which I don't use but I can't remove, and also one that work with free software. So here is what is happening for me:Debian: only free software (good) + systemd (bad)Devuan: proprietary software (very very very bad)

Where is Devuan installing contrib and/or non-free software without your explicit consent? Which install medium have you used? With which options? As we have repeatedly said, Devuan does not install any non-free software at all. It asks if you want to use contrib and/or non-free but this is the same as in Debian. The only non-free software available in the install media is non-free wifi firmware. And you are asked if you want to use it or not. If you discovered an unexpected behaviour in this respect, please file a bug report, providing detailed information about the install image you used, the options you selected at install time, and the specific non-free software you found installed in your Devuan system.

The shortest answer: I'm using Devuan exactly like I was using Debian.But the result regarding sources.list is different, as the non-free and contrib keywords has been added.

A bit more in the details:I put one iso (Ascii RC, amd64 cd1) to a thumb drive, run the installer (non graphical), and I was never asked about free or non free things.Still my sources.list has non-free and contrib added.

For me removing systemd is one awesome step forward, but if I have a chance to unwillingly install one non-free software, this is ten steps backwards...For this reason changing the default Debian behavior comes with great risks.

Having non-free wifi firmware in the installer sounds fair if the user is asked about.

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

The shortest answer: I'm using Devuan exactly like I was using Debian.But the result regarding sources.list is different, as the non-free and contrib keywords has been added.

A bit more in the details:I put one iso (Ascii RC, amd64 cd1) to a thumb drive, run the installer (non graphical), and I was never asked about free or non free things.Still my sources.list has non-free and contrib added.

Can you please post the sources.list file that you found in your system at the end of the installation? That would be helpful.

Re: Devuan 2.0 ASCII Release Candidate

I'm using very precise hardware that I know can run well without closed source firmware, more precisely the Ethernet adapter. (I used Debian for ages for this reason, being fairly confident to have no closed source things installed). I don't know if this is because of the wifi or the other Ethernet adapter (that I can't physically remove.... maybe I should DIY a bit...), but the installed did that without my consent.

I'm reading a bit more about the issue now. It sounds like you have to use either the expert install, or the graphical install..., or that's a bug.More here:https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=1984Ha ha ha, the ID of the topic is...................1984 !!!

About my sources.list, I removed the contrib and non-free words as soon as I could (and the cdrom line), so the spacing may have changed, but it did look like this:

I'm using very precise hardware that I know can run well without closed source firmware, more precisely the Ethernet adapter. (I used Debian for ages for this reason, being fairly confident to have no closed source things installed). I don't know if this is because of the wifi or the other Ethernet adapter (that I can't physically remove.... maybe I should DIY a bit...), but the installed did that without my consent.

I'm reading a bit more about the issue now. It sounds like you have to use either the expert install, or the graphical install..., or that's a bug.More here:https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=1984Ha ha ha, the ID of the topic is...................1984 !!!

About my sources.list, I removed the contrib and non-free words as soon as I could (and the cdrom line), so the spacing may have changed, but it did look like this: